


Reaffirmation

by delires



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:32:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delires/pseuds/delires
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Future!fic. A year after going their separate ways, Kurt turns up on Blaine's doorstep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reaffirmation

Blaine is already late – frothy toothbrush between his teeth, suit jacket dangling from one arm, iPhone vibrating in his pocket – when the buzzer for the front door sounds. He presses the intercom while trying to fight his second arm into the jacket, then doesn’t know what to do when his ex-boyfriend’s voice comes through the speaker clear as a bell, and his mouth is too full of toothpaste to answer.

*

“I honestly wouldn’t be here if I had anywhere else to go.” Kurt drops a black duffel bag onto Blaine’s floor.

As if things weren’t already surreal enough, the bag is Nike.

“Okay,” Blaine says. “Well, I can’t be back until...God, eight at best, so─”

“That’s completely fine,” Kurt say too quickly, “I can amuse myself for as long as─”

Blaine tears his eyes away from the white Nike tick and pushes the apartment keys into Kurt’s hand. “I don’t have a spare.”

“Absolutely. I’ll be right here. Do not worry your pretty head.”

Kurt clutches the keys to his chest with one of his nervous laughs. Blaine stares at him and gets a terrible sinking sensation in his stomach.

“Oh, God.”

“I’m sorry,” Kurt says, “I know this is awful. But he proposed and I didn’t know what to do.”

Blaine nearly trips over the Nike bag in his rush to get out the door. “I’ll see you at eight. Okay? Dinner’s on me.”

*

At the office they have policies about Facebook, but that is exactly what phones with web browsers are for. Kurt’s status is ‘in a relationship’. Obviously. Since some guy has just proposed to him.

‘Some guy’ is one Lucas Gallo, who has 693 friends and at least one album composed entirely of black and white photography.

It takes Blaine thirty seconds to reach the conclusion that the man is an absolute moron.

*

“How long have you been seeing each other?” Blaine asks over dinner, as if he hasn’t been keeping virtual tabs on it. Kurt circles the ends of his chopsticks while he finishes chewing his mouthful.

“Three months,” he says, once he has swallowed. “That is not a proposal amount of time. Right? It’s not just me. Tell me.”

“It’s not just you,” Blaine says.

“I didn’t know we were being exclusive,” Kurt says. “We hadn’t even had that conversation yet.”

In Blaine’s mind an image forms of not-exclusive Kurt ending a phone call on a breezy “Ciao, Lucas,” before turning to drape his arms around the neck of another man, who will pull him in close as their tongues slide together...

Kurt’s gaze has drifted off to follow a waitress. He is checking out her shoes (which, granted, are fantastic) as he says, “I’m always exclusive, obviously, because I’m basically a giant prude-”

The image in Blaine’s mind evaporates.

“You are not a prude,” he says.

“I’m Sandra fucking Dee,” Kurt says, dryly. “But I wasn’t making any demands on him. And then, boom. Matrimony’s on the table. No warning.”

Blaine picks up a mushroom with his chopsticks. “I can appreciate someone having the impulse to tie you down early.”

There is a pause where they both pretend this wasn’t an awkward thing to say. Blaine lifts his chopsticks to his lips, only to find that there is nothing between them. He looks down and brushes the mushroom discreetly off his lap.

“Well,” Kurt says, clearing his throat, “He has to go back to Lisbon at the end of his semester, and-”

“Semester?”

“He’s a PhD student, thank you very much. Older than you. I don’t want paedophile jokes.”

“I didn’t make any. Really, Kurt, would I?”

“I’ve seen you without the innocent, Blaine. I know that this-” Kurt waves his chopsticks in Blaine’s direction “-upstanding gentleman bit is all for show.”

Blaine takes that as an invitation to swipe a piece of chicken from Kurt’s plate and to chew it with his mouth open. “Anyway,” Kurt continues, flicking a grain of rice at him across the table in protest, “He has to go back and, clearly to him, a proposal was the next logical step in our blossoming relationship.”

“He definitely knows you can’t just hand him a green card, right?” Blaine says.

“I think that’s brushing a tad too close to racist. Not sure you can say it.”

“What’s his academic field?”

Kurt’s eyes follow Blaine’s hand as he reaches for his beer and then tips the bottle to his mouth. “I want to say...numbers? Something with numbers.”

It is a joke, but still an opportunity for Blaine to say, “Probably don’t marry him,” and then, “At the very least learn what he does first.”

“I think I’ve already reached that conclusion by myself. But thank you for the affirmation.”

Blaine grins, “Now that is just inviting a Savage Garden singalong later.”

“Don’t pretend you know the words to anything other than Katy Perry. You’re fooling nobody, Mr. Anderson.”

It is all starting to feel more and more natural between them. That is, until Kurt’s phone begins to vibrate on the table and they both see the name ‘Lucas’ lit up on the screen. Kurt doesn’t touch it. He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, looks up at Blaine and says, “Keep talking,” like they can pretend this particular elephant is not in the room.

*

On the walk back to Blaine’s apartment, Kurt casually drops the “How about you? Seeing anyone interesting?” question.

They have stopped for frozen yoghurt at a vendor and are walking slowly, passing the cup between them. The street has held onto the day’s heat. The air feels sweaty.

“No,” Blaine says. “I was for a while. Turns out he was kind of a tool, but I missed it until the last minute, like always.”

“Tell me more,” Kurt says, handing over the yoghurt, which still has Blaine’s spoon wedged into it. Blaine digs it out. He is grateful that he has a real person to tell Kurt about, even if four dates (all ending in slightly uncomfortable sex) don’t quite hold up against exclusivity and a proposal.

“He broke up with me by text.”

Kurt looks pained. “Oh God. Horrible.”

“I know.” Blaine thinks about Andrew’s lovely white grin, his big tanned arms and about grinding against him on the dance floor in the most shameful way imaginable. He still can’t listen to Rihanna’s ‘Breaking Dishes’ without blushing.

They walk a few more paces before Kurt knocks his hip sideways into Blaine’s. “You had a lucky escape,” he says, smiling teasingly when Blaine looks at him. “Really, who would dump you? The guy must be mildly brain-damaged at the very least.”

Blaine laughs and passes the half-melted frozen yoghurt back to Kurt. “We still agree on so many things,” he says.

*

Blaine’s apartment is in a great location close to his office, but is approximately the size of a normal person’s closet. He has to explain that Kurt can’t “just take the couch” because the couch and the bed are one and the same thing.

They stand in the middle of the apartment staring down at the unfolded bed-couch. Kurt has the strap of the Nike bag thrown over one shoulder.

“Okay,” he says, “There is no way I will let you sleep on the floor in your own home. And I’m certainly not sleeping on the floor...” ─ Blaine nods. Kurt doesn’t do floors ─ “So, we’ll have to just be sensible and adult about this by both agreeing that it doesn’t mean anything and it isn’t weird. All good?”

“Sure,” Blaine says. “Just be careful you don’t move too far to the centre. It folds up on you if you do that.”

The threat of the mattress closing around them like a mousetrap is a great incentive to keep some distance. It is the first time Blaine has been glad of his bed being so volatile. He is staring at the back of Kurt’s neck in the dark, trying to keep his breathing even, when he hears Kurt says his name.

“Blaine?”

“Yes?”

“I hope you didn’t feel that way about me.”

“What way?”

Kurt is whispering, so Blaine whispers back, even though there is nobody to disturb.

“Like with that other guy,” Kurt says, “That you missed me being a horrible person until it was too late.”

There is the sound of sheets shifting and then Kurt’s arm is reaching back towards him over the unstable mattress springs. Blaine takes Kurt’s hand and brushes his lips over the knuckles, fast and light enough for it to be excusable.

“No,” he says, “I never felt that.”

*

What Blaine had felt, when Kurt broke up with him, was a sense of gut-wrenching inevitability.

Their relationship had always been too easy. For a long time they had gotten away with it, because Blaine always tried his best at things and because Kurt was crafty and really good at making stuff work.

They spent a year doing long-distance until Blaine graduated high school and made it to New York, where there were separate colleges and separate apartments because they didn’t have to be in one another’s pockets to still be in love.

Eventually, life caught up to them. College ended. The city wanted their blood.

High-paid training contracts with good law firms were like gold dust in the middle of a recession. You certainly didn’t turn them down if, like Blaine, all you really knew how to do was fit in and follow where you were led.

But Kurt had a face like Audrey Hepburn, a flair for managing life that could be eerie to witness and dreams that were bigger than his entire world. People like him didn’t end up with white-collar city professionals.

Inevitable.

*

Blaine wakes up to the smell of Kurt all around him. It isn’t unusual for sense memories left over from dreaming to be strong enough to trick him, so when he opens his eyes he is surprised to find Kurt actually there, sitting beside him in bed.

“Hi,” Blaine says, amazed.

“Where’s all your stuff?” Kurt is staring around the room with a frown on his face.

“What?”

“There’s nothing of yours here. I mean...that? That was already here when you moved in. Without a doubt.” Kurt points to the vase over by the window, then to the zen-like picture of white orchids on the wall. “This too.”

“True,” Blaine says, his brain slowly catching up. “I never got around to replacing them.”

Kurt looks down at him. “This isn’t a home, Blaine. How can you stand to live somewhere with no heart?”

Blaine throws the covers aside. “Okay. I’m going to need to eat some breakfast if we’re having this conversation already.”

“The conversation where I suggest you go decor shopping anywhere other than Ikea?”

Kurt has his head tilted to the flirty little angle that usually lets him get away with saying anything he wants to. Blaine pauses in the bathroom doorway.

“The one where you are inappropriately judgemental about my life.”

*

The problem is that Blaine will never not be in love with Kurt.

Kurt must know it too, because he has a way of knowing everything. His very presence is a threat to the delicate infrastructure of a life built in his absence.

Blaine blinks his eyes under the shower spray, water stinging between his lashes, and realises that he is terrified of what Kurt’s being here means or does not mean.

*

When Blaine comes out of the bathroom, Kurt is standing in front of the refrigerator. His pyjama pants hang low on his hips and cling just right. They make his ass look amazing.

“I was going to make you breakfast, but it would be a stretch for even me to whip up something fabulous when all I have to work with is hummus and beer,” Kurt says. Blaine steps up behind him and takes the tub that is balanced on his outstretched palm.

“I love it,” Blaine says, scooping his finger into the hummus. Kurt turns around and lets the refrigerator door swing shut.

“Sweetie, I know you do. I’ve bought it a half dozen times at the grocery store this year before remembering that running out is no longer a matter of life and death for me.”

“It’s tangy and creamy all at once. Same as you,” Blaine says, without thinking, and sucks the hummus off his finger. That makes Kurt’s eyelashes flicker.

“Not exactly a perfectly balanced meal all on its own.”

“I have these cracker things,” Blaine says, turning to rummage in one of the cupboards.

“Do you ever use this?” Kurt says, running a hand over the pristine stove, his fingers pale against the dark glass.

“Not really. Maybe once?”

“How are you eating?”

“I eat out. Or do takeout. Or get taken out. Being corporate means you get looked after that way. It’s a bit like being really a high-class escort, but with stacks of extra paperwork.”

Kurt looks up from stroking the stove and smirks at him. “I always knew you’d make an excellent gigolo.”

“They put on dinner at the office as well,” Blaine continues. “Sometimes I have that. There’s a proper chef and everything.”

“Fancy.”

“It’s sort of essential with the hours they expect us to work. I’ve known people to stay at their desks until 2am.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Wouldn’t be a very funny one.”

“Have you ever done that?”

“I have a strict ‘no later than 10pm’ rule. The partners tell me that attitude will get me nowhere, but you know how I am about sleep.”

Blaine puts the hummus back in the fridge. When he turns around again, Kurt has quit his usual posing as though surrounded by paparazzi. His posture has gone loose. His hands are at his elbows and his gaze on the floor. “You’re judging me again,” Blaine says.

Kurt blinks like he is coming back to life.

“I’m sorry.” He runs a hand through his hair, which is still un-styled, as he hasn’t had his turn in the bathroom yet. It must be driving him crazy. He looks at Blaine and says. “So since we are clearly going out, where’s good for brunch around here?”

*

They go to the deli down the street, where the pastrami is to die for and the pastries melt in your mouth like butter. As far as Blaine is concerned, this is the finest brunch in Manhattan. He never goes anywhere else, because if something isn’t broken then there’s no point trying to fix it.

At a table upstairs, by a window looking out over the street, Kurt curls both hands around his coffee cup and says, “About the judging.”

Blaine dusts the last flakes of pastry from his fingers and settles back in his chair. “Okay.”

It takes Kurt a moment to gather his thoughts. Then he speaks slowly. “This might sound utterly insane, but I still consider you to be my best friend.”

“I haven’t seen you in the flesh in a year,” Blaine points out, but Kurt waves this aside.

“Okay, touché. So I need to grow as person and step up. Whatever. The fact remains that I still haven’t made a better friend than you since I left Lima. I probably haven’t even met a better person than you, Blaine. I don’t think they exist.”

Blaine feels his own hand give a little twitch against the table. “Where are you heading with this?”

“I’m heading to me being able to thank you,” Kurt says, “for being a good enough friend to not turn me away yesterday.”

“Sure,” Blaine says, “Friends are for that. I mean-”

“That’s what friends are for.”

“Exactly.”

Kurt places his hand over Blaine’s, fingers squeezing. “I want you to be happy, and to be yourself and all of those other aspirational clichés. That’s what makes me judgey.”

A waitresses is clattering at a table nearby, piling dishes onto a tray. She’s watching them but trying not to make it obvious. Blaine doesn’t blame her. He has been coming here unaccompanied for the best part of a year. This is a total break in routine.

“I’m not unhappy,” he says.

Kurt stares at him for a second longer before releasing his hand. “Well, that’s good. I mean ‘not unhappy’ isn’t quite the same as ‘happy’, but good. It’s a start. I’m not unhappy either. Do you want the rest of my eggs? I’m already stuffed.”

*

Because Andrew is their unofficial social chair, Blaine doesn’t go out with the other trainees anymore. That doesn’t mean he is no longer invited, but since textgate he has been afraid that if he gets drunk around Andrew then he will punch him, or cry, or try to seduce him. Any of the above would be equally shameful and pathetic. Besides, these things have a way of getting back to the partners and Blaine really doesn’t want to get blacklisted this early in his career.

This isn’t such a bad thing. Alcohol is just empty calories anyway. So, instead of waking up with his face stuck to Andrew’s pillows and then being hungover until dinner, Blaine spends his Saturdays at the gym or heading out to Brooklyn to visit his brother. Sometimes he might catch up with a college friend or simply plug in his headphones and drift around a gallery alone, imagining that the city is empty except for him. It’s nice.

He hasn’t spent an entire day with someone for a long time.

After brunch, they walk a block over from the deli and go to the Museum of Sex, because Kurt has never been before and that is a catastrophic shame.

Standing in front of a glass case, Kurt stage whispers, “But what is it for? Where does it go?”

Blaine tilts his head to one side, then the other. “I don’t know. I can’t work that out either.”

They stare at the unidentifiable object together. Kurt leans closer and says, “I’m never not going to feel sheltered, am I?”

Blaine shakes his head. “I don’t think being sheltered from that is in any way a bad thing.”

From the museum they head up towards Bryant Park, to a Japanese book store which has an adorable cafe. While they wait in line, Kurt sceptically eyes a giant cut-out of Astro Boy until Blaine nudges him with his elbow and says, “He looks like you.”

“Do not even,” Kurt tells him, lifting a finger. “I don’t know what ninja powers this one has, but whatever they are, that is what will happen to you if you say that again.”

“He’s atomic.”

They step forwards in line. Kurt pretends to study the perfect cakes laid out beside the counter

“In that case,” he says, haughtily, “I will allow the resemblance in the name of Debbie Harry. But only for Debbie and only on this occasion.”

*

The grass is still flattened after Broadway in Bryant Park the week before. They sit there on a bench and watch a group of kids throw a Frisbee around.

“I just feel like nothing I do matters anymore. I feel like I am nothing.” Kurt stretches his legs out straight and stares at the toes of his boots. Over the course of the day, he has been sinking slowly back into the unguarded honesty which most people never get to see from him. “Whenever someone asks me about my life, I have nothing interesting to tell them.”

“You just got proposed to,” Blaine says. He doesn’t try to catch Kurt’s eye; he doesn’t want to throw the conversation off course.

“I’m sick of being in the chorus,” Kurt continues. “What if I never get out of it, but while I’m busy trying to, I’m letting all my other opportunities slip away?”

“What other opportunities? Did you stop writing?”

In front of them, a girl performs a spectacular dive and comes up again with the Frisbee clutched in her hand.

“I don’t know,” Kurt says. “Is your fancy corporate world recruiting right now?”

Blaine smiles as he tries to picture Kurt in an unremarkable suit, fawning his way through a conference call, tracking stocks on his phone, meekly presenting a tray of coffees to the partners. It is all wrong. “You wouldn’t last a day before you felt compelled to give somebody the dressing down they deserved,” he says.

Kurt crosses his legs. The toe of his boot brushes Blaine’s calf as he turns towards him. “I know I’m being melodramatic here, but indulge me?”

“Always.”

“Sometimes I find myself thinking about how maybe every choice I’ve ever made has been wrong. Do you ever feel that?”

Blaine thinks about it, weighing up what Kurt wants him to say against what he actually feels.

“I’m not sure that there is a ‘wrong’,” he says, slowly. “This isn’t a test. It’s just life. You can’t win at it.”

There is a flurry of movement, pigeons taking flight, which distracts Blaine for a second. When he looks back again he finds Kurt staring at him with a kind of amused reverence.

“You,” Kurt says.

“Me, what?”

Kurt opens his mouth but before he can say more, a Frisbee comes screeching between them, just missing both of their faces, and then his eyes go wide right before three teenagers are barrelling into their bench, not quite able to stop in time.

*

It is the best Saturday that Blaine has had in months. They catch a movie at this hipster arts theatre and then split a bunch of mezze at a grungy but fabulous little Greek place.

“There’s an I Dream of Jeanie marathon on TV,” Blaine says, as they stroll back towards the apartment through the buzzing lights of Koreatown. “Do you want to go back and crash out?”

Kurt is staring up at the glowing signs on the buildings. Waves of colour pass across his face with each new set of letters. He slips his arm casually through Blaine’s, leaning into him a little as they walk. He nods at a particular sign up ahead. “As magical as that sounds, I think I might have a better idea.”

*

Too many chairs and tables are tangled around a tiny stage with a karaoke machine and microphone stand. Tracy Emin style slogans shine from the walls. The shots come served in racks of test tubes, all lined up for maximum Dutch courage. Blaine chokes back too many Ruby Reds while Kurt goes practically orgasmic over his Absolut Vanilia.

They sit through some clumsy performances, though it is only a matter of time (and test tubes) before one of them gets their hands on that mic. When Blaine steps up and starts flipping through the electronic catalogue, he is already half-drunk.

He laughs at his own song choice before he starts to sing. He hasn’t performed in front of people since he left college, but it is like riding a bike; you don’t forget.

James Morrison’s ‘Wonderful World’ is cheesy and delightful, a crowd-pleaser that would do any show choir proud. The trendy bar goes wild for it, the applause lasting so long that the machine runs over into the next track in the listing. Someone hands Blaine a fresh test tube, so he just goes with it, knocking back the shot and giving ‘Wonderwall’ everything he’s got.

Working a stage is such an out of body experience that Blaine forgets Kurt is even with him until the intro to Kylie Minogue’s ‘Wow’ is starting up to fresh applause, and then Kurt is right there beside him in the spotlight, taking the mic from his hand.

“You’ve bummed these people out enough with all that emo warbling,” Kurt says. He’s wearing his show face, addressing the audience more than he is Blaine. “You go ahead and jig around in the background now, honey. This one’s mine.”

Kurt sings. It is like everything has suddenly clicked right back into place. Blaine busts his best moves in the background and by the time the song ends he is smiling so hard his whole face aches.

Buzzing with adrenaline, he grabs Kurt by the waist. “That was amazing. You’re amazing,” he blurts, but Kurt’s expression goes flat and with a sudden jolt Blaine remembers that they aren’t boyfriends anymore.

He lets go. The realisation is like being broken up with all over again.

Blaine sticks to the bar after that, getting blind drunk while Kurt smacks the heck out of another two tracks on his own.

By 11pm he can hardly stand. Kurt has to practically carry him out of the bar and then flag down a taxi because Blaine won’t be able to walk the three blocks to his apartment.

He hears Kurt say to the driver, “No, sir. My friend will absolutely not throw up in your cab,” and the use of the word ‘friend’ makes him angry because being friends with somebody you’re in love with is such bullshit.

As the taxi pulls away, Kurt leans across Blaine’s body to fasten his seatbelt. “If you puke right now and this man wants money then I am taking your wallet to give it to him,” he says, and Blaine can smell his smell and see his beautiful pale wrists, but cannot have any of it. He wants to just press his face against the cold window and cry until he can’t feel anything.

Inside the building, as Kurt struggles to unlock the door one-handed, Blaine kisses his neck. He knows he is pushing, but Kurt pretending to be so clueless makes him feel mean enough to push. “What did you expect me to think?” he says when Kurt tells him to stop. Then the door opens and there is nothing to support them, so they both go crashing through. It is the last thing Blaine remembers before he wakes up the next day to a rolling hangover and Kurt asleep on the floor, instead of in the bed where Blaine can kiss his knuckles.

*

He is still clutching his head, wishing the whole room would just explode and take them with it, when Kurt sits up

Blaine looks down at him from the bed. “You being here is really hard for me,” he says, and Kurt nods.

“I’m going to find somewhere else to stay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t-” Kurt starts to reach up to him but then pulls his hand back just as quickly. He looks guilty and sad, no doubt because Blaine has become the definition of pitiful.

“Everything is shit,” Blaine says before he can stop himself. It makes Kurt covers his face and say, “Oh, Blaine,” against his palms.

*

Mid-shower, Blaine has to leap out of the cubicle so he can throw up in the toilet.

When he steps back in, he opens his mouth under the spray, spits out the taste of acid and thinks back to the days when he could sing a song about being someone’s teenage dream and believe in it coming true.

*

They spend the day apart, which is easier, then share a quiet dinner at a cheap Italian down the street.

“I’ve found a hostel I can stay at while I look for an apartment,” Kurt says, twirling pasta around his fork.

Blaine’s tortellini looks like body parts. He is already sick of it. When the waiter passes, he stops him and orders another glass of wine.

“Why don’t you take it easy there, cowboy?” Kurt says. His own wine has barely been touched. Blaine looks at him across the table and then quite deliberately tips his glass back again. Kurt shakes his head. “I thought I was supposed to be the spiteful one,” he says.

As if to prove his point, Kurt’s phone vibrates, its screen announcing: ‘Lucas calling’. The waiter returns to pour the wine. Blaine picks up his glass and nods at the phone.

“You could at least take his calls, Kurt. The poor guy.”

“I actually missed the part where Lucas became your business,” Kurt says, and then, out of nowhere, Blaine is suddenly so angry that he has to put his wine back down for fear of spilling it everywhere.

“That happened right about the time you turned up at my door with luggage that you stole from him,” Blaine says. “You could have gone to anyone else, Kurt. Why come to me?”

“Clearly for no other reason than to pass cruel judgement on your life,” Kurt says, which is such an invitation.

“Oh, give it to me,” Blaine says. “I know you’re dying to.”

Kurt drops his fork with a clatter and then it is a real fight. Gloves are off.

“Fine. You want to hear it? You live in Manhattan, Blaine, not Stepford. Nobody’s forcing you to be some perfect example of conformity. Don’t you think it’s time you stopped desperately trying to live up to your father’s expectations?”

“Why? So that I can live up to yours instead?”

Kurt pulls back in surprise. Blaine knows people are staring at them ─ he can sense how still the entire room has become ─ but he’s wanted to say this for too long. He can’t stop.

“I need to be a part of this world as it is, Kurt. We can’t all throw everything away on an ideology. That’s not in me. The only time I’ve ever cared enough to stand up for things is when I was with you and now I’m on my own and what’s the point?”

Blaine gets to his feet as Kurt’s phone begins to ring again, because Lucas is a chump who doesn’t know Kurt well enough to know when to quit. Before he walks out, he throws his wallet on the table and says, “You might as well take that. I'm sorry I'm not what you want me to be.”

*

Blaine makes it halfway back to his building before he realises that not only does Kurt now have his wallet (full of cards which have Kurt’s date of birth as their PIN, and enough ID to invalidate Blaine’s very existence) he also has the keys to the apartment. In the space of two days, Kurt has waltzed in and taken command of all of Blaine’s worldly possessions without batting an eyelash. He didn’t even have to ask; Blaine just gave them to him.

It seems so fitting that he stops right there in the middle of the sidewalk and laughs about it.

For a long time the city had seemed like some kind of private member’s club, which Blaine had felt so privileged to be a part of that the thought of having his membership revoked was too frightening to consider. So, he had fallen back on what his mother had always taught him to do: integrate, integrate, integrate.

“You forget these things come more easily to you,” Kurt told him once, when Blaine was scrambling together his applications for all the big firms and was on the phone with his dad twice a day, confirming details like the address of their country club in Westerville or the name of the Dewey and LeBoeuf contact who would put in a good word.

“It doesn’t feel easy to me,” Blaine snapped at him.

At the time, Kurt was spending his days trawling for agents, working thankless temp jobs he’d be free to drop at a moment’s notice. In his own way, he conformed just as much as Blaine, but to a different set of standards.

Everything had seemed too important back then, to both of them.

Now, Blaine turns off his phone and walks for a long time. He passes through streets that he knows until he reaches ones that he doesn’t, where he sits down on the steps of a building and looks up.

In Ohio the sky was always huge, but here it seems limited, boxed in by skyscrapers and drained of its stars. Blaine stares at the gap of dark space where the sky should be and finds that it makes him feel like he is nothing.

He decides to go back.

*

The door buzzes open immediately, before his finger has even left the bell. Blaine can’t decide if this is a good or a bad sign so he takes his time with the elevator. He watches his reflection slide into place and then away again as the doors move.

Upstairs, Kurt is waiting in the apartment doorway. Blaine quickens his pace then, because he can tell just by looking.

When Kurt's arms go around him, he is ready for it. He accepts the embrace like it is just one more inevitable page in their story.

"I thought you'd fallen under a subway train or been kidnapped for sex trafficking," Kurt says, his voice high and too tight. He pulls back enough to look Blaine in the eye. "Or that you just hated me enough to never come home.”

The thought of hating Kurt is so insane that Blaine has kissed him before he can even question it. It is not sloppy and pathetic, like the night before, but a good old-fashioned “everything’s okay” kind of kiss, a gentle press of reassurance that makes the world stop.

Blaine opens his eyes and finds Kurt looking at him with the same expression from the park, sort of awed, as though he’s said something so obvious that Kurt can't believe he didn't think of it first.

The tightening of fingers around his biceps is the only warning Blaine receives before Kurt is pushing him backwards. He hits the wall with Kurt pressed against him. Kurt’s thigh slides between Blaine’s legs. His mouth is wet and open.

Blaine tilts back his head and rolls his hips, letting the moment just absorb him. Then he pushes in the opposite direction, steering them through the door and into the apartment, where he can pin Kurt’s wrists to the jumpy mattress and make his whole body arch.

“Don’t mess with me,” Blaine says.

“No,” Kurt promises. He takes Blaine’s face in his hands and kisses him again, then hooks his knee over Blaine’s hip to pull him closer.

They can’t lose clothes fast enough, trying to stay pressed together as they shake arms out of sleeves and kick denim from their toes. The mattress shudders beneath them.

When their dicks finally touch, the moans melt in Blaine’s ears like a harmony. Kurt bites him in the shoulder. The friction is rough and hot, borderline uncomfortable, but there isn’t time for anything more elaborate. Blaine licks his palm, lets Kurt lick it too and then wraps his hand around the both of them. The mattress springs screech, but Kurt curls his body to meet each thrust, fixing the angle and making everything sing. They learned all this stuff together, bit by bit over the years.

Blaine finds Kurt’s lips and comes kissing him.

He tries to keep the rhythm going until he feels damp fingers take over where his grip has gone slack.

“I won’t let this city have us, Kurt,” he says, against Kurt’s ear, then sucks the lobe between his teeth.

A gasp rises through Kurt’s chest. He clings to Blaine as he comes. And when the mattress tilts like it wants to crush them, Blaine slams an arm down in time to stop it.

*

Sun shines through the open curtains, spotlight-bright. It is Monday morning, well before the weekday alarm. Blaine has decided he is skipping work even before he feels Kurt’s bare foot rubbing up his calf.

“Good morning,” he says.

“I’m still in love with you,” says Kurt.

Blaine has been holding his breath for those words all along, from the moment that Nike bag first hit his floor. He feels them right in his chest.

“Do you know, when he proposed, I laughed in his face,” Kurt continues, “and when he asked what was funny, I said ‘I’m already engaged,’ because I was thinking of you.”

“That’s crazy.”

“I still said it. Maybe you can’t get life wrong, Blaine, but you can get it right. We were right.”

Kurt shifts closer so they are almost nose to nose. The sun is in Blaine’s eyes, but he would rather squint than get up to draw the curtains. He slides his arm around Kurt’s waist.

“Never mind apartment hunting,” he says, “You can live right here on my couch-bed if you like. I’d let you.”

Kurt smiles at him. “We’ll have to draw up a lease.”

“I couldn’t charge you.”

“You know I’m not actually gold-digging, don’t you?” Kurt says, “Because I am so much classier than that, Blaine. I didn’t even hock your wallet. I still have it and everything.”

Blaine strokes his fingertips over Kurt’s stomach, where the evidence is dried against his skin. “You’re the classiest,” he says. Kurt pokes him in the ribs.

“Don’t let the jizz go to your head. That’ll wash off. You’ve got nothing on me.”

“Do you think I’m gold-digging?”

“I don’t have any gold for you to dig. You’d have a hard time.”

Blaine grins. “You’re a different kind of gold, Kurt Hummel.”

“Okay, is this where you sing me Savage Garden?” Kurt narrows his eyes a bit. He is trying hard not to smile back. Blaine makes it five whole bars into ‘Crash and Burn’ before Kurt’s hand covers his mouth.

“Stop,” Kurt says firmly. He moves his hand away. “I’ll tell you a secret.”

“Okay.”

“I’m jealous of you.”

“I’m jealous of you too,” Blaine says, without hesitation. “The only solution is that we stick together. Then we’ve got everything covered. Between us we’ll almost be like one whole normal person."

Kurt turns his face away, laughing into Blaine’s neck. “How tragic,” he says.

*

People like Kurt might not end up with white collar city professionals, but they do end up with people like Blaine.

It isn’t tragic. It is the opposite.


End file.
